We swore we wouldn’t inspect the hives all at once again, but after a temperament shift in the apiary this weekend we felt compelled to see what was going on with the bees.

On Saturday Mr. Curbstone was on the receiving end of some rather agitated guard bees.  With four hives it was a little difficult to tell if the entire bee yard was on alert, or just one hive was the source of aggression.  Regardless, Mr. Curbstone is currently nursing four bee stings.

The trouble started when he discovered a bee caught in the sleeve of his shirt while we were in the garden, but she stung him before we could reach her to free her. To avoid additional guards honing in on the alarm pheromone, he knew to go inside, rinse off, and change his shirt.  We went back to working in the garden for a while.  Then a few hours later, completely unprovoked, while standing some 8-10 yards from the hive stand, another guard locked Mr. Curbstone in her sights, stung him squarely on the eye brow, and then pursued him through the garden.  Something seemed amiss.

The bees were clearly agitated that afternoon, and as we weren’t sure what set them off, we called it a day and left the garden area to get out of the firing line, and give them an opportunity to calm down. 

With four hives, decreasing spring nectar flows, and the fact we’re still feeding the package colonies, we wondered as to whether or not there may be a robbing problem going on in our apiary contributing to increased aggression.  Hive predation from rodents or skunks, robbing from bees and wasps, failing Queens, declining nectar resources, inclement weather, and residual alarm pheromones from bee stings, all can contribute to increased aggression in an apiary, so it was unclear at that moment exactly what the problem was. 

Clearly it was time to investigate further. On Sunday we had only intended to inspect our primary swarm hive, Salvia, but instead we decided to inspect all four hives to see if we could figure out what was going on.   

We started with the smaller colonies first.  Last we’d seen the Chamomile and Rosemary hives was when we removed the Queen cages.  That was two weeks ago, and we had seen 1-2 day old eggs at that time in both hives, but it was too early to discern if the eggs being laid would develop into worker brood, or drones.  During this inspection, assessing brood pattern, both overall distribution of brood, and ratios of workers:drones, would give us an idea as to whether or not our Queens in those colonies were well mated.

The Package Colonies

Chamomile Hive

We opened the Chamomile hive and were somewhat surprised to see that the bees hadn’t moved up much into the new hive body we placed two weeks ago. Four frames in fact were completely untouched, and the remaining four were only partially drawn out with comb, with some scant pollen stores, and some stored nectar.

After seeing how fast our swarm colony had built up earlier this spring, the difference was notable.

There was some question from the start about this hive, as these bees seemed to delay their initial orientation flights after they were hived, were slower to draw down syrup in the feeder, and overall entrance activity was significantly lower than the other package hived the same day.

We moved down to the lower hive body and found a small blob of burr comb on the top of the frames on the lower box, which we removed. 

The second frame we pulled we sighted the Chamomile Queen again.  Two inspections in a row, a new record for us!

We found capped brood on approximately 3 1/2 frames, and although it didn’t seem like a lot, the capped brood had an excellent pattern.  Large patches of flat-capped worker brood, with just a few uncapped cells in between for the heater bees to help keep the brood warm.

One of the brood frames contained wall-to-wall brood, with no bands of capped honey, or pollen.  Usually the bees will store capped honey in an outer ring on the frame, with a band of pollen, and then the brood in the center of the frame, so that frame stood out to us.

These bees were disadvantaged in that they had to draw all of their own comb from foundation as we had no drawn combs for them to start with.  Perhaps eager to begin laying, the Queen simply filled that frame as soon as it was drawn, before there was space to store pollen and nectar reserves.  The other brood frames had stores on the same frame, so we’re not too concerned, and expect that frame will appear more normal with the next round of egg-laying.

The package colonies were hived on May 7th, 22 days before this inspection, so we were very happy to already find baby bees inside this hive…

…quite a few of them…

…and even found some bees just beginning to emerge.

So overall, the Chamomile hive, despite having relatively low population, seems at least to be Queen right, and the colony is progressing with new worker bees hatching.  However, their neighbors, hived on the same day, are doing noticeably better.

Rosemary Hive

Comparing the Rosemary hive to Chamomile was nothing short of shocking.  It was clear from the moment of taking the roof off the hive that the Rosemary hive has at least twice the population of its neighbor. 

This significant difference in population is likely due to drift.  Hiving two packages on the same day can make drift, where bees wander into a neighboring hive by mistake, significantly worse.  It’s not something we’d do again, especially as our hives are currently all located on the same hive stand.

We’re not sure if the increased population is entirely due to drift from the large swarm colony on the other side of Rosemary, or if we also lost some population from the Chamomile package during their initial orientation, or both.  Our suspicion is both.

It is obvious that the Rosemary hive has a much higher percentage of dark bees, not the homogeneous collection of blond package Italian bees observed in the Chamomile hive.  Our swarm colonies have significant variation in color, but overall, the majority of bees are quite dark, implying that much of Rosemary’s boost in population has come from the swarm colony.

This isn’t bad, in that the swarm colony has more than enough population to spare, but this boost in population is clearly helping the Rosemary hive get off to a much stronger start.

As we hived the packages on May 7th, the increase in population can’t be all ascribed to new bees hatching, as they only started to hatch within this last week.

Like Chamomile, Rosemary had some capped honey stores on the brood frames, with scant pollen, and plenty of capped and uncapped brood.

Rosemary was clearly ready for a third hive body, which we added as we wrapped up the inspection.

 

The Swarm Colonies

Lavender Hive (Afterswarm)

The afterswarm hive is continuing to grow since we last saw them.  They’ve drawn comb on six of the eight new frames we gave them two weeks ago, and now have brood in both hive bodies.

There was plenty of capped brood in both hive bodies, and some newly hatched bees.  Most of the capped brood was worker brood, but toward the bottom of a couple of the frames we did find little bits of drone brood too. 

We also found one frame with some very young bee larva.

The only other interesting finding was that they seemed to be borrowing wax from one of the frames of foundation, as it was riddled with holes, with bees chewing out the wax.  I suppose this is a case of why make it, when you can just move it?

We added a third hive body to this colony with eight new frames as they seem to be steadily growing, and no doubt will soon need the extra room.

Salvia Hive (Primary Swarm)

Starting out with bees, when they’re in one brood box, they’re quite easy to handle and inspect.  Our swarm bees initially had a very calm demeanor, the frames were easy to move, and the hive easier to reassemble. Fast forward two months and it’s a slightly different story.

Other than adding hive bodies, we hadn’t inspected Salvia in a month, and it had been some time since we’d worked down to the lower brood chamber.  The two drawn frames of comb we had used when hiving the swarm needed to be rotated to the edge so we can eventually replace them.  As we’ve been considering whether or not to split this colony into two colonies, we also wanted to check for signs of swarm or supercedure cells.  It’s not uncommon after a swarm finds a new home, for the Queen to be replaced soon thereafter.  

As we had some unwelcome aggression the day before, and the hive is large enough that it would take time to do a thorough inspection, we decided that this time we should use the smoker.

We bought it months ago, but hadn’t used it until now, as we hadn’t felt the need.  Some beekeepers never smoke their hives, but some of it really depends on the nature of the bees, and the beekeeper. 

The smoke interferes with the bee’s sensory perception and ability to detect threats to the colony, but also, thinking there may be trouble in the hive, the bees gorge themselves on honey when smoked.  If they need to vacate, these stores would serve them well while establishing a new colony.  Gorging also causes them, in their post-prandial Thanksgiving-dinner-like state, to be more calm.  The downside of not using a smoker when working bees is the colony can become increasingly aggressive with each hive manipulation.  Over time this can result in colonies that are almost too aggressive to work.  So as with other aspects of beekeeping you have to decide what works best for your bees in your bee yard.

For as fast as this colony was growing, we were surprised that the upper hive body placed two weeks ago was completely untouched.  No comb drawn out at all.  We removed that hive body and found plenty of bees in the 3rd box.

We removed this hive body and the one below it to get to the bottom box.  Starting from the bottom, and working up, it’s easier to keep the majority of the population covered so you don’t have an entire open hive full of bees in your bees-iness during the whole inspection.

As we removed the hive body on top of the bottom box, we noticed we’d torn a small amount of burr drone comb that the bees had built under the bottom bar on one of the frames.  Staring us square in the eye was a purple-eye stage drone pupa, approximately 17 days old.

This is one of the disadvantages of not working down the hive regularly.  However, it’s far less disruptive to the colony to occasionally lose a few drone pupa, than to work a hive every week just to prevent small blobs of burr comb between frames.

Except for the top hive body, the entire hive was wall to wall bees.  Even using the smoker it was difficult to drive the bees around enough to see what we were doing.

The smoker was remarkably helpful for reassembling the hive though, helping to push the bees back down into the frames before re-stacking the hive bodies.

There was still a fair amount of drone brood throughout all three hive bodies, maybe 15-20% of the population, but what was more remarkable was the relative lack of food stores.

Up to now this hive has usually had plenty of capped honey, uncapped nectar and pollen reserves.  However, this time the outer frames that are often used as the hive pantry were completely empty.  The brood frames did have some nectar and pollen, but considering the increase in population in this colony since it was hived at the end of March, the cupboard seemed relatively bare.

Perhaps this is why the bees were more agitated while we were gardening on Saturday.  This colony is not short of field workers to forage for food, but they’re producing so much brood that they seem to be having a slight issue keeping up with demand.

What this hive wasn’t short on was propolis!  Icky sticky resinous goo that the bees use to stick everything down, or together, within the hive, or to fill cracks with.  It makes moving frames a little more tricky, and everything a lot more sticky!

We saw no sign of swarm or supercedure cells this hive, which is good news.  Overall there’s a slight increase in population, but not as much as we expected (probably due to drift into the neighboring Rosemary hive), and significant exhaustion of food reserves with this hive.  We doubt their reserves were robbed, as this colony is formidable, but the hive entrance had been wide open up until Sunday, so it’s possible.  It seems more likely that the sheer increase in population has caused them to use up much of the previously stored nectar and pollen from early spring, and they seem to be focusing on brood production, rather than honey stores.

As we’re still waiting for an entire brood cycle to emerge from the neighboring package hives, we’re still feeding, but hope to cease supplemental feeding soon, we’d just like them to draw a few more frames of foundation first.  In the meantime though, as Salvia seems short on pantry stores, and aggression in the bee yard was noticeable on Saturday, we’ve elected to resume feeding in Salvia until the package hives can have their feed removed.  We’ve also reduced the hive entrance again on Salvia while we’re feeding to decrease the likelihood of robbing.  Our plan is to then remove the feeders from all the hives at once.

We’ll leave the Lavender and Rosemary hives alone for a while as they seem to be doing just fine.  The next inspection we’ll recheck the Chamomile hive to see how much their population is increasing.  We’ll also check the upper hive body on Salvia to see if they are managing to draw that comb, and see if food stores are increasing.  At that time we may elect to transfer a couple of frames of brood from Salvia to help decrease the population slightly, decreasing demand for food, and place those brood frames in the Chamomile hive to help bolster their population. We’ll have to wait and see how things are going during the next inspection though.